Huawei to announce manufacturing plans in India soon

World's third largest smartphone seller, Huawei, will start manufacturing handsets in India soon. The details will be announced in about a month.

"Now we already have licences for manufacturing in place. In short term we will announce our local manufacturing plan... In one month," Peter Zhai, president for Huawei India Consumer Business Group said on Wednesday at the launch of Huawei P9.

The company expects India to be its second largest mobile devices market, after China.

"As an international brand we are interested in developing our India business at the right time. It is going to be second largest mobile devices market after China. We will be aggressive in India. Huawei will increase presence across 50,000 stores by end of this year from about couple of thousands now," Zhai said.

Huawei has been selling mobile phones in India since the last 16 years and established its research and development centre in Bengaluru in 1999.

The company sells smartphones under two brand names - Huawei and Honor. It has launched new Huawei brand phone in India after a gap of almost three years.

"India is a very special market. We would like to be more localised in terms of branding. We have a team of 3,000 people in R&D which we would like to leverage for local understanding of consumer needs," Zhai said.

"Huawei P9 comes with three antennas to improve signal quality and help reduce call drops," he said.

Huawei is also planning to set up its own branded stores but has not firmed up its plan yet.

The company also unveiled two tablet PCs - the Matebook and the TalkBand B3 - which will be debuting in India soon.

Huawei P9, priced at Rs 39,999, has started selling at e-commerce portal Flipkart from Wednesday.